Immunity is broadly classified into innate immunity with which a person is born and acquired immunity that is obtained in the course of daily life. The innate immunity is also called “natural immunity”, which responds to antigens in a non-specific manner and without particular immunological memory. The innate immune system includes skin and mucous membranes blocking the invasion of antigens, a low pH of gastric acid, and phagocytes removing harmful foreign substances such as macrophages and polymorphonuclear leukocytes. The innate immunity actually defends a host from most of the infections. Meanwhile, the acquired immunity system is characterized by its immunological memory against a previously infected antigen, and thus, it specifically responds to and effectively eliminates the antigen, when invasion occurred again.
A decline in immune function may result in a variety of immune diseases such as asthma, seasonal or perennial rhinitis, allergic sinusitis, conjunctivitis, atopic dermatitis, urticaria, hemolysis of erythrocyte, acute glomerulonephritis, and others.
It is more important to prevent these immune diseases than to treat them, but there are many problems in employing the currently available therapeutic agents for the prevention of the diseases. Thus, there is a need to develop a method for preventing and treating the immune disorders without taking the immune-enhancing agents having possible adverse effects.
Many studies have been progressed to develop new medicaments and formulations for preventing and treating the immune disorders and, in particular, have been focused on the development of anticancer agents with low adverse effects originating from natural substances. As an example, an extract for enhancing immunity derived from Korean seaweeds was developed (see, Korean Laid-open Publication No. 10-2000-00063617). However, there is still a need of superior immune-enhancing agents derived from natural substances.
Meanwhile, the concept of immune-enhancing agent was suggested by Roman, and it has started to be known to public from the observation that the administration of any immune-enhancing substance in combination with a vaccine enhanced the effect of the vaccine compared to the administration of vaccine only. In addition, the “immune-enhancing agent” refers to a substance which elevates specific or non-specific, cellular and humoral immune responses of a host, which is recently attracting much attention due to the use of immunopotentiation in the treatment of infections or tumors.
The present inventors have endeavored to develop a new composition for enhancing immunity which can prevent and treat immune disorders and has minimized adverse side effects; and have achieved the present invention by confirming that a cell line derived from the cambium of Panax ginseng including wild ginseng and ginseng, and a lysate, an extract and a culture medium thereof increase the activity of NK cells, and enhance the proliferation rate of the cells of lymph nodes in an antigen-specific manner.